Stephen Colbert celebrated the election of a new Pope during his May 8 monologue on “The Late Show” by throwing shade at vice president JD Vance. America-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was chosen as the 267th Pope by 133 cardinals on the second day of the conclave. The new pontiff is the first American Pope in history and has taken the name Leo XIV.
“Of course, there’s lots of speculation on whether Leo will continue the progressive reforms of his friend, Pope Francis,” Colbert said about the new Pope. “No one knows for sure yet, but we do know that in February, he did tweet, ‘JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’”
“Holy Father, you had me at ‘JD Vance is wrong,’” Colbert quipped as the studio audience roared with cheers.
Vance appeared on Fox News in January and attempted to invoke a “very Christian concept” in order to defend Trump’s “America First” agenda. The vice president explained: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Not so fast. Prevost responded to Vance by sharing an article from the National Catholic Reporter that called out the vice president for his interview. The article reads: “Vance’s argument echoes a medieval concept known as ordo amoris — the order of charity, often attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. The idea is that love must be ranked, that a person rightly prioritizes their affections, with family on top. In some ways, it sounds practical, even reasonable… But the problem with this hierarchy is that it feeds the myth that some people are more deserving of our care than others.”
Prevost spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and became a cardinal in 2023. The late Pope Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 to head a Vatican office in charge of choosing which priests should serve as Catholic bishops.
Watch Colbert’s full monologue in the video below.
